The Gangster

Harry Warren interpreted. “The teachers put Italian kids in the slow class. Their mothers work at home, finishing garments. The kids have to help. Sewing buttons and felling seams to midnight, then up at six for school — they’re not slow, they’re sleepy.”

“I was told you’re an orphan, Richie.”

“My mother got diphtheria. My father went back to Italy. But I really am sixteen, Mr. Bell.”

“What is this disguise you came up with?” In the business districts, a youthful Van Dorn apprentice would masquerade, typically, as a newsboy. But there were no boys hawking the Sun, the Times, the Herald, or the American on Elizabeth Street, where those who were literate only read Italian. Instead of newspapers, Richie Cirillo had a sack of cloth slung over his skinny shoulder.

“I’m a runner. Like I’m delivering dresses to be finished in the tenements and bringing them back to the factory when they’re done.”

“O.K. You’ll do.”

“Wow! Thank you, Mr. Bell.”

“Keep your eyes open. One eye on the bank, the other on one of us, so you know who to run to if you get in trouble.”

6

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”

Francesca Kennedy was a dark-haired, blue-eyed Irish-Italian beauty. Her pale white face shone like a splash of sunlight through the confessional lattice that hid the priest. She knelt in a good coat with a fur collar and a modest scarf to cover her head.

“How did you sin, my child?”

“I stabbed a man to death.”

“Did anyone see you?”

“No, Father.”

“Are you sure?”

“One hundred percent. It was just me and him in the bed.”

“Well done!”

A rolled-up silver certificate passed through the lattice. Francesca Kennedy unrolled it and examined it closely.

“It is not counterfeit,” the priest assured her.

* * *

“You want we should hit the Van Dorn captain?” whispered Charlie Salata.

Salata’s gang ran Black Hand letters, kidnapping, and protection, and he hadn’t gone to confession since he was a boy in Palermo, but kneeling in church still made him whisper. “Gold Head… Right? Show the Van Dorns who owns Elizabeth Street.”

Silence. He ventured a glance at the lattice. It was dark inside the priest’s booth. All he could see through the perforations in the crisscross wooden screen were Stiletto Man eyes, empty as night, clouds mobbing the stars. Still silent, but for a staccato click-click-click-click-click. Was he spooked or did he really hear the man behind the screen opening and shutting a knife again and again and again?

Salata tried again. “You prefer we hit the old dicks on the coal wagon? Spook their horse so he gallops into people and Van Dorns get blamed.” Again, Salata waited for a reaction. Precisely how his men should attack the Van Dorns guarding Banco LaCava would not ordinarily be worth troubling the Boss, but Salata recognized a delicate situation. The trick was to distract the Van Dorns so they could bomb Banco LaCava and get away with the money and at the same time scare the White Hand Society out of existence.

“Maybe we hit the red-haired one, show they can’t trick us.”

“Hit the kid.”

“The mick?”

“Not the mick. The Italian.”

“But he’s—”

“He’s what?”

“Nothing.” Salata backpedaled instantly. The stiletto was not a pistol. You didn’t wave it around, making threats. You only pulled it to kill. And to be sure to kill, you had to pull it without warning. The narrow blade could fit through the grid and right in his eye.

“Hit Richie Cirillo.”

That the Boss had discovered, somehow, the Van Dorn apprentice’s name was a stark reminder that Charlie Salata’s weren’t his only eyes and ears on the street. “The kid is Italian. He will be an example for the neighborhood. Teach them never go to police. Never go to Van Dorns.”

“How hard?”

“So hard, people don’t forget.”

Salata jumped from the kneeler and hurried out of the church.

Ten minutes later, right on schedule, his place was taken by Ernesto Leone, a counterfeiter.

“The plates are O.K.,” Leone reported. “The ink is better than before, but still so-so. The paper is the big problem. Like always.”

“Have you tried to pass any?”

“It’s not ready. Not good enough.”

“Tell Salata to send someone to Pennsylvania. Buy stuff in general stores.”

“I don’t think it will pass.”

“And Ferri. Tell Ferri send someone upstate.”

“It’s not good enough.”

“It is costing money and earning none.”

Leone said, “If there is trouble, Salata and Ferri will blame me.”

“My patience is not endless, Ernesto Leone.”

Leone scuttled from the church.

Roberto Ferri, a smuggler, confessed next. “My men caught wind of a heroin shipment. The Irish.”

“How big?”

“Very big, I am told. From Mexico.”

“Which Irish?”

“West Side Wallopers. Hunt and McBean.”

“Well done, Roberto!” Hunt and McBean were up and coming “graduates” of the Gopher Gang.

Ferri said, “I hear there is a market for cocaine on the aqueduct job. The Negroes use it. But no market for heroin… If you know anyone on the aqueduct, maybe we could trade heroin for cocaine.”

“You just get your hands on it. I’ll worry about the market.”

“You know someone to sell it to?”